Fast Food Friday

If you are an Orthodox Christian, you know that we are currently observing the Apostles' Fast, so I thought this would be a good time to begin a series of posts on meals for fasting. I especially want to focus on meals that are quick and/or very easy to make, and I thought it would be appropriate to post these on Fridays. Since I had been a vegetarian for years before I was Orthodox, I think the discipline of fasting was an easier thing for me to incorporate into my life than it is for many converts. Having an array of vegan foods already in my cooking repertoire made it fairly easy to settle on meals for these days, and I thought I'd share some of our favorites.

Since I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat fish or shellfish whether during a fast or not. During fasting periods, basically I eat a vegan diet. If you're not Orthodox, fasting typically refers to refraining from all meat, dairy, eggs, and usually fish, wine and olive oil (some consider these to mean all alcohol and oils). Shellfish is permitted. Actual observance is personal, depends on one's one spiritual journey, and should be undertaken with consultation from one's priest. Fasting is accompanied with prayer, almsgiving and confession. I freely admit that the spiritual aspects of fasting pose a greater challenge for me than the physical discipline, but if I'm slack on the physical discipline, of course that makes the spiritual discipline that much harder. Being unprepared, busy, tired, sick, etc., can be a obstacle to observing the fast, so having some easy fall-back recipes is really useful. If you are a recent convert, you may not have built a list of reliable stand-bys, and if you're not, it can be nice to add new ones to the rotation.

I've noticed that popcorn for dinner is a popular concept around blog land. Some serve it with cocoa, some serve it with wine. At our house, it's popcorn and smoothies. Sorry about the blurry picture. We were in a hurry to move on to some Harry Potter and Scrabble. Popcorn and smoothies is one of our go-to meals when the meal plan falls through, we don't feel like cooking, we run short of time, we've gotten back from evening church services during Lent, or we just want something kind of easy and fun.

For most of my life my mom made popcorn at 9 pm as a bedtime snack. I grew up eating popcorn made on the stove top, so I don't really like the microwave kind, and in fact, we don't currently have a microwave. Stove top popcorn is very easy to do. I pour enough canola oil into a sauce pan to give the bottom a good coat, then I cover the bottom of the pan with a single layer of popcorn kernels. I put the lid on the pan, leave it vented, and turn the heat to medium high. After a few minutes the popcorn will start to pop. When the rapid fire popping dies down, I pour it into bowls. We salt it, and I like to add nutritional yeast. Mom never buttered the 9 o'clock popcorn, so to me there isn't anything missing, but of course you could add margarine (hopefully a non-hydrogenated one) if you really wanted. Or you could go the other direction and make this a totally oil-free meal with an air-popper.

We don't really have a smoothie recipe. Basically we toss whatever frozen fruit we're in the mood for into the blender, add enough juice to cover the fruit, and blend. This time I think we had mango, pineapple and strawberries. We meant to blend that with orange juice, but we didn't realize we had run out, so we used grape. Not our favorite smoothie ever, but still tasty. This simple meal is surprisingly satisfying, and it's very easy to always keep the ingredients on hand. I have a feeling it would go over well with kids, too. Watch for actual recipes on upcoming Fast Food Fridays.

Frugal Frippery

I went to a family wedding over Memorial Day weekend, and I really felt like it demanded a cotton sundress. I have owned and loved many a cotton sundress over my lifetime, but it just so happened my wardrobe had a bit of a gap in the cotton sundress department. And new dresses really weren't in the budget, especially since I had plenty of other things I could wear to said wedding. But something in the back of my mind was whispering "cotton sundress" pretty insistently.

So on the Thursday afternoon preceding Memorial Day, I stopped off at Goodwill on my way home from work. There happen to be four (yes, 4!) thrift stores that don't really take me out of my way between home and work, but I only had time to stop at one. I pegged this one as the best sundress candidate. I told myself if I didn't find one, it wasn't meant to be, and I'd just have to wear something else. So I went in, and my eyes were immediately drawn to a particular dress on the dress rack. (Naturally, a certain shade of green was involved.) Remarkably, it looked to be my size, and I nabbed it. I pulled about four more dresses off the rack and went to try them all on. The eye-catcher dress fit! But it was strapless, which I wasn't too keen on. I stood in the dressing room and hemmed and hawed. None of the other dresses worked at all. Then I realized the dress had a wide fabric belt. Inspiration struck. I bought the dress and went out of Goodwill four dollars poorer.

On my way home from work on Friday I stopped at a craft store and bought a spool of ribbon for $2.50. I could have bought the amount I needed by the yard for about .75 less, but the spool was on sale and actually cheaper by the yard. I thought the ribbon was something it would be handy to have on hand, especially in that particular green.


Then the work began. I wish I could say it was a snap, and I whipped it up in no time at all. But first I had to reacquaint myself with the sewing machine, which had been packed up since we moved to Indiana. Then there was lots of pinning and basting, sewing, judicious use of the seam ripper, readjusting and sewing again. I'm sure someone with more sewing experience, or even with my experience who wasn't totally out of practice could have done it much more quickly, but it was well worth the effort. I used the original fabric belt to make straps, and a replaced the belt with a length of ribbon. I'm quite pleased with the result; I got a cute new cotton sundress for under seven dollars. I think Katie would be proud. Plus, if anyone invites me to a luau, I'm ready.

New Gallery

In my very first post I mentioned that we still had very few pictures hanging on the wall of our home. I've recently made a little progress toward correcting that by finishing this project. I turned our hallway into a picture gallery. I purchased these frames oh, long about eleven years ago when I was in college. They've held a few different pictures, hung in a few different hallways, and I believe there has been some attrition when frames have been smashed in moves. But over all they've served well, and I still like the style of these frames quite a bit.


This was a particularly fun picture project. My mother-in-law had given me stacks of pictures of my husband's childhood, so one day I hauled them to my parent's house. Then I spent an evening paging through the endless albums of photos from my own childhood, and I picked out matching sets of photos--one of him and one of me. I paired first day of school photos, pictures of each of us with our grandfather, with our mothers on our birthday, with new baby siblings, wearing silly hats, etc. Then, since we are currently without a scanner at our house, I took the pictures to Target one day and used their picture scanning/editing machine to print copies and crop the photos, blow them up, or rotate them as needed to fit the required slots in the frames.

I know some people don't care to display lots of family pictures in their home, but if you are the scrapbooking sort, I think this idea would translate really well to a scrapbook. In fact, maybe I'll turn this project into a one eventually, when I'm ready to give these frames their next iteration in life. In the meantime, we are enjoying the added layer of coziness that our once stark hallway has acquired.

Crock-Pot Granola

After a long (Lenten and Paschal) interlude, I find myself once again in a blogging mood. I feel like I've actually been doing some stuff lately worth blogging about, and I'm trying to remember to take pictures. I know I could write blog entries without pictures, but I find I love looking at the photos in other people's blogs so much I want to include them in mine. I'm trying to ignore the desire for a new camera and work with what I have.

We had a very busy holiday weekend, that included going out of town for a family wedding and graduation party. We came back Sunday, and I was pleased that I managed to get quite a few things accomplished yesterday, including making granola. In the winter time, I eat oatmeal for breakfast nearly every day. In the summer, I like to eat granola, but this involves advanced planning, or buying pricey boxes of the stuff. I'm very much a grab and go breakfast person. In the evenings I pack both my lunch and my breakfast for the following day. I eat breakfast at my desk first thing while I read my email, so if I don't plan ahead and make granola it's usually a piece of fruit and an handful of nuts, or peanut butter and crackers.

I made the granola in the Crock-pot, which is handy for a couple of reasons. First of all, it doesn't heat up the kitchen nearly as much as using the oven. Secondly, it's much harder to burn that way, so you can do other things while you leave it to get all toasty. You just have to give it the occasional stir when you pass through the kitchen. Make sure you get right into the edges when you do that, because that's wear it gets the toastiest.

I consider granola recipes to be more of a formula or a guideline. I take the basic framework and substitute whatever I have on hand, am in the mood for, or think will go well together. It's pretty hard to mess up. I got the original recipe from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. It makes a cereal style granola, not a big, chunky trail mix one. I'll start with the broad outline, and then give the specifics of what I did this time.

Crock-pot Granola

5 cups rolled oats
3 1/2 cups add-ins (dried fruit, seeds, and nuts of your choice)
2/3 cup maple syrup (I think I've also used honey, or part honey before.)
1/4 cup oil (I use canola)
1/4 tsp. cinnamon (opt.--feel free to leave this out and change or add seasonings to suit yourself)

Lightly oil your crock, then add all your ingredients and stir together. If you don't want your fruit and nuts toasted, leave these out. I like them that way, but I know some prefer them raw.

Cook on high, uncovered 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Reduce to low, cook an additional 2 hours, uncovered, until your granola reaches the desired level of crisp toastiness. If you left out your add ins it might not take so long.

Spread it out on a cookie sheet or other relatively flat surface to cool. Stir in your add-ins if you left those out. Once cool, store in an airtight container. Serve with the milk or yogurt of your choice and enjoy.


For this particular batch I used: 1/2 cup sesame seeds, 1/2 cup chopped almonds, 1/2 cup broken pecans, 3/4 cup dried blueberries, 3/4 cups chopped dried figs, and 1/2 cup chopped dried pear slices. I left the pear slices out and stirred those in and the end because I think they get a bit burnt tasting and too chewy if I toast them with everything else. I also used only 4 cups of rolled oats, plus one cup of quick cook, because I ran out of rolled.

The main drive behind my choice of add-ins was that this is what I happened to have. I think this is the first time I've ever made granola without some unsweetened coconut. I was out of that, and I decided to forge ahead. This batch is still really tasty. Even though I'm a big coconut lover, I don't really miss it. Other things I commonly include: walnuts, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, raisins, chopped dried dates, apricots, peaches, etc.. Really any mix of nut, seed or dried fruit that you take a fancy to will work. Crock-pot granola is pretty forgiving, and tasty, so try it!

Life Interrupted

A virus is certainly an inconvenient interruption to daily life. Around here we have been fighting both the virtual and real-world variety. I have been bogged down with a bad cold that has left me with no energy and frequent sinus headaches to boot. I thought I had it kicked, but I woke up Friday morning with sore throat and light-headedness. Hopefully, I really am on the mend since I'm approaching the two week mark now. Peppermint tea and clementines are a panacea, right?


February sunshine helps, too. It's a definite bonus to get home in time to enjoy a little bit streaming in from the west-facing windows. Mostly I come home from work and curl up somewhere to read. Not a lot of cooking or homemaking has been going on. Since Lent is rapidly approaching, we've been enjoying plenty of quick and easy, cheesy dinners, and I doubt James has minded when my lack of desire to cook has led to the chance for take-out of the meaty variety for him. Easy comfort food has been the order of the day. Grilled cheese and tomato soup is a perennial favorite. I don't generally buy a lot of prepared foods, but I like to have a few in the the cupboard for dinner "emergencies." We both love the tomato soup from Trader Joe's. I think it's organic creamy tomato. I add a little basil and fresh ground pepper and call it a night.


Aside from the cold I've been fighting, our computer also succumbed to a bug. James bought new anti-virus software and wiped the hard drive. Twice. But all seems to be well now. Plus the computer is a little faster thanks to the clean-up. Now if I could just say the same about myself, we'd be in good shape.